![youtube the last guardian gameplay youtube the last guardian gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ogig6YWbaAg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Starting with a brief prologue which introduces protagonist Joel during the first panicked moments of the outbreak, the game then flashes forward 20 years to a devastated America where the remnants of the population eke out a living in oppressive militarised quarantine zones. It's a good call, and coupled with the high-quality production, both visually and from the voice cast, makes for a compelling tale.
![youtube the last guardian gameplay youtube the last guardian gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k6ssIkVxg_k/maxresdefault.jpg)
![youtube the last guardian gameplay youtube the last guardian gameplay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7VVwC4PrgJU/maxresdefault.jpg)
Instead, The Last of Us makes a conscious effort to focus the story on the surviving human characters and how they go about coping with the aftermath. Significantly though, the game keeps the details of the outbreak and the disease itself deliberately vague, recognising that any attempt to explain something that's basically pretty ridiculous is doomed to failure (Resident Evil and it's ever expanding psuedo-scientific virus nonsense says hi). That's not to say the story spares us the usual tropes – a virulent infection has decimated the population, degenerating it's victims into mindless ravening lunatics and bringing civilisation to its knees, pretty much exactly as it has a thousand times before across every possible media.